Category Archives: ecological services

AS Arman Oganisian of Stable Markets writes “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.” That is a fundamentally engineering attitude. It is fundamentally about the economics, and, in particular, the dramatic drop in levelized cost of energy for wind and renewables, … Continue reading →

Added references Updated again below, `Plants of the future’, 2018-05-03 Update, 2018-04-29: While my first thoughts and reasons for this post were simply to collect together a number of links pertaining to an interesting subject, regarding which there appeared to … Continue reading →

(Updated, 2018-05-02. See below.) I love Sankey diagrams, and have written about them with respect to influence of Big Oil on U.S. climate policy, and in connection with what it takes to power a light bulb, providing a Sankey-based explanation … Continue reading →

In the technical summary from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory based at the California Institute of Technology titled “Far northern permafrost may unleash Carbon within decades”, An excerpt: Permafrost in the coldest northern Arctic — formerly thought to be at … Continue reading →

(Click on figure to see a larger image, and use browser Back Button to return to blog) Data derived in part from SeaWIFS and image is from the NASA Earth Observatory here. Related links: Global Biosphere Global Biosphere over time … Continue reading →

I spent a bit of last week at a symposium honoring the work of Charney and Lorenz in fluid dynamics. I am no serious student of fluid dynamics. I have a friend, Klaus, an engineer, who is, and makes a … Continue reading →

From David Suzuki, who I’ve cited here more and more often, from his blog post, Consumer society no longer serves our needs, of 11th January 2018. An excerpt: But where is the indication of our real status — Earthlings — … Continue reading →

How old is today? light comes from everywhere and from nowhere. The ocean, glittering then vanishing in gauzy vapors, handles us more gently than anyone could have hoped. Snow flurries in and hurries out. Mists veil coasts so raw, so … Continue reading →

EPA Anti-Leak Campaign EPA employees are currently receiving instruction in “unauthorized disclosure training,” teaching them not to leak classified or near-classified information. This training is part of a government-wide eradication effort following National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster’s memo to agency … Continue reading →

I decided to do a quick literature search on the impacts of climate change upon ecosystems and migration patterns. I could have kept the list private, but why not make it public? Not all these articles are purely about the … Continue reading →

Energy and water. Update, 2017-07-19: The Solver Elon Musk at the National Governors Association conference last week: It is possible to supply every electron needed to keep America humming by covering just 100 square miles with solar panels. “The batteries … Continue reading →

By withdrawing from the Paris Agreement on climate change, the United States is abdicating its role as the world leader in using science-based information to inform policy. Business, political, and scientific leaders the world over are condemning the decision. More … Continue reading →

Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson. I think he’s awesome. Marvelous. I saw him in Boston. He and I did not get off well, at the start, because of my being awestruck, and feeling very awkward, and the short time we had … Continue reading →

Hat tip to Matt Levine for introducing me to the term Chesteron’s fence: Chesterton’s fence is the principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood. … In the matter of … Continue reading →

Jane Lubchenco is a Professor at Oregon State University, and was administrator of the U.S. NOAA from 2009 through 2013, the U.S. Science Envoy for the Ocean at the State Department from 2014 to 2016, and the president of the … Continue reading →

I have made an important update to an earlier post here, Getting back to 350 ppm CO2: You can’t go home again. The message, essentially based upon recent work Tokarska and Zickfield on one hand, and by The Global Carbon … Continue reading →

“The Army has determined that additional discussion and analysis are warranted in light of the history of the Great Sioux Nation’s dispossessions of lands, the importance of Lake Oahe to the Tribe, our government-to-government relationship, and the statute governing easements … Continue reading →

(Click on photo to see larger image, and use browser Back Button to return to blog.) About the Cape Cod National Seashore.. How Cape Cod changes. (Click on photo to see larger image, and use browser Back Button to return … Continue reading →

(Update of this piece, included below.) (Major update of this piece included below.) You can’t. It’ll cost much more than 23 times 40 times the Gross World Product to do it. And, in any case, you need to go to … Continue reading →

Evidence this form of government and Constitution does not know how to address let alone solve climate disruption … Look at the topsy-turvy plight of Washington State’s Initiative 732 Carbon Fee-and-Dividend bill: Even people who think it’s a good idea … Continue reading →

As previously posted here, people along coasts and their governments, are failing to learn the lessons of both climate-induced sea level rise, and storms like Extratropical Sandy. Now, it’s startlingly clear how ignorant people are of these necessary lessons. The … Continue reading →

Professor David Titley (see also, and here) writes in the online newsletter DefenseOne: Many observers think climate change deserves more attention. They might be surprised to learn that U.S. military leaders and defense planners agree. The armed forces have been … Continue reading →

Certain claims regarding contributions of health programs to the United States federal budget in a debate last night made me curious, and so I checked the figures on this from the Office of Management and Budget. Of special importance to … Continue reading →

Kalman filtering and smoothing; dynamic linear models

I have used dlm almost exclusively, except when extreme efficiency was required. Since Jouni Helske's KFAS was rewritten, though, I'm increasingly drawn to it, because the noise sources it supports are more diverse than dlm's. KFAS uses the notation and approaches of Durbin, Koopman, and Harvey.

``The real problem is that programmers have spent far too much time worrying about efficiency in the wrong places and at the wrong times; premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming.''Professor Donald Knuth, 1974